NCSE affirms evolutionism is no longer the core of science education

I think the NCSE got tired of defending Darwinism. I guess the Discovery Institute promoting ID and the creationists promoting creationism was bad enough, but when mainstream scientists began to join the anti-Darwin fray, it was too much. So what did the NCSE do? They found something to replace Darwinism as the central core of science education. See for yourself what this new core of science education is here. 🙂

NOTES
This post was filed under humor. Don’t take it too seriously, but I think there is a grain of truth to what I said.

UPDATE
since this is a humor post, I’ve decided to make this UD’s first official OPEN THREAD. Have at it guys, but keep it civil and family friendly.

16 Responses to NCSE affirms evolutionism is no longer the core of science education

Now, while I certainly don’t think Darwin’s Doubt will surpass Newton’s book Principia as ‘Best Science Book Ever Written’, I have to admit that such over the top hype does have me anxious to receive my copy.

“Speaking as one who has examined the original Vitruvian Man drawing, I can say that Leonardo was looking for a numerical design scheme that informs the proportions of the human body.
The drawing began as an illustration from Vitruvius’ book, De Architectura where Vitruvius justifies the use of the square and circle as design elements because those shapes are integral to the human body: a man’s height is equal to his width (with arms outstretched) as a square, and a circle drawn with the navel as center and feet as radius is coincident with the hands’ reach.
Leonardo also notes the other proportional relationships from Vitruvius such as the head height measures to the whole as well as the arms and hand sections.
Leonardo then continued measuring (from the evidence of pin point indentations made by walking dividers, especially along the left vertical edge) to find more proportional relationships. He would take a measure of a part of the figure with the dividers and walk that measure along the height to see if the measure would fit an even number of times.
From this drawing and others where Leonardo was working on the same type of problem it is evident that Leonardo believed there was a something like a unified field theory of design where everything in nature was related by numerical and geometrical design systems.
He was one of the original ID thinkers.”
– Dr. Ford

The preceding interactive (powers of 10) graph points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which ‘just so happens’ to be directly in the exponential center of all possible sizes of our physical reality. i.e. 10^-4 is, exponentially, right in the middle of 10^-35 meters, which is the smallest possible unit of length, which is Planck length, and 10^27 meters, which is the largest possible unit of ‘observable’ length since space-time was created in the Big Bang, which is the diameter of the universe. This is very interesting for, as far as I can tell, the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions than directly in the exponential middle. As well, this exponential ‘coincidence’ is also interesting since conscious observation keeps turning out to be a integral, non-negotiable, part of measurement within quantum mechanics:

“It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.” Eugene Wigner (1902 -1995) from his collection of essays “Symmetries and Reflections – Scientific Essays”; Eugene Wigner laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963.

“It will remain remarkable, in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the scientific conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate universal reality” –
Eugene Wigner – (Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, Eugene Wigner, in Wheeler and Zurek, p.169) 1961 – received Nobel Prize in 1963 for ‘Quantum Symmetries’

Here is Wigner commenting on the key experiment that led Wigner to his Nobel Prize winning work on quantum symmetries,,,

Eugene Wigner
Excerpt: When I returned to Berlin, the excellent crystallographer Weissenberg asked me to study: why is it that in a crystal the atoms like to sit in a symmetry plane or symmetry axis. After a short time of thinking I understood:,,,, To express this basic experience in a more direct way: the world does not have a privileged center, there is no absolute rest, preferred direction, unique origin of calendar time, even left and right seem to be rather symmetric. The interference of electrons, photons, neutrons has indicated that the state of a particle can be described by a vector possessing a certain number of components. As the observer is replaced by another observer (working elsewhere, looking at a different direction, using another clock, perhaps being left-handed), the state of the very same particle is described by another vector, obtained from the previous vector by multiplying it with a matrix. This matrix transfers from one observer to another.http://www.reak.bme.hu/Wigner_.....io/wb1.htm

further note:

the argument for God from consciousness can be framed like this:

1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality.
2. If consciousness is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality.
3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even central, position within material reality.
4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality.

Larry Moran reckons its true that random mutation is important but that natural selection and drift fixes mutations. That means selection is guided and has a goal. Neo darwinism discredited by a Darwinist that does not like been called one. ID is true and Larry acknowledges it. Bottom of the post as a remark. Did I understand the mighty prof correctly? Please help!

Well, the NCSE is a pure propaganda organization anyway, so it only makes sense that they would follow the money.

It is funny that the two things they’ve been pushing as the “core” of all science are so full of holes and, frankly, quite irrelevant to most science that goes on.

Yes. I posted this to show what a transparently political organization the NCSE has become. I’d say it’s ok to form and organization and lobby for evolutionism or climate “science”, but to start arguing it’s the central core of science education. No way.

For them, their motto should be, “follow the money wherever it leads, forget the evidence”.

They are pure propaganda. Under the heading on the main page, they state their purpose: “Defending the teaching of evolution and climate change.”

Then further on the main page: “NCSE provides information and advice as the premier institution dedicated to keeping evolution and climate change in the science classroom and to keeping creationism and climate change denial out.”

Having listened to part of the interview while I was driving in the car I would say King’s overall view was a bit less than full support for either God or intelligent design. It sounded to me like he wasn’t yet ready to take a definitive position, but felt that there are a lot of things in nature that should give us pause and make us consider the possibility of a designing intelligence (whom he referred to as God).

Just out of curiosity, can anyone here name a prominent supporter of Darwinian evolution that is also a skeptic of anthropomorphic global warming? I cannot think of one. In fact, I find that somewhat amazing when you consider the deterministic beliefs held by Darwinians and that man is just a cog in the great random biomass. After all, why should our interaction with our environment be held to some special standard of scrutiny?

After all, why should our interaction with our environment be held to some special standard of scrutiny?

Oh I don’t know but maybe past history and documentation of how poorly we (humans) have performed in regard to the environment, i.e., pollution so bad that a river can catch fire, over harvesting of most all natural resources, poor land use practices, introduced species, release of large amounts of Hg into our environment (how many water systems have warnings that pregnant woman and children should not consume fish from our waterways?) ect. And a bit of basic chemistry thrown in to put the issue in perspective, e.g., what might occur when large amounts of sequestered carbon is released into the atmosphere.

Re: OldArmy94’s curiosity about Darwin supporters and global warming supporters. There does seem to be a similar relationship.

Begin with the notion that everybody has a worldview, even scientists. The same goes for political philosophy. It would be a rare scientist who would change his worldview or political philosophy as the result of studying evidence. The norm would be for scientists to use their study to reinforce their positions, not challenge them.

Scientists who begin with materialists assumptions naturally see Darwinism everywhere they look.
Scientists who begin with leftist assumptions naturally embrace anthropomorphic global warming. We can see this in the proposed solutions to climate change. All the solutions involve moving policy to the left. Moving policy to the left is what someone on the left would want to do even if there were no evidence for climate change.